Comparative boundary work: US acid rain and global climate change policy deliberations

Boundary work between science and politics in US acid rain and climate change congressional hearings is compared. In the acid rain case, boundaries were flexibly drawn between science and politics as expert scientists tailored their expertise to appear both objective and useful. In climate change hearings during the 1990s, there were fewer examples of direct boundary work. Three explanations are presented: expert scientists and economists drew on knowledge claims from a boundary organization; they drew on a discourse that combined economic growth and environmental protection in more politically acceptable ways; and they developed more sophistication in merging science and politics in hybrid forms. However, these three developments proved to be not completely stable, leading to further boundary work that discursively established a safe scientific domain away from the hearings.